


Chocolate Pudding

by azriona



Series: Advent Calendar Drabbles 2015 [24]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Advent Calendar Drabble, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: Children in Need 2007 Born Again, F/M, M/M, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5511536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/pseuds/azriona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like chocolate pudding, when you're used to tapioca.  Or a kaleidoscope, when it's been knocked from a table.  </p><p>Or maybe it's not like either of those things at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chocolate Pudding

**Author's Note:**

> The 24th installment of the Advent Calendar Drabbles for 2015. Today's prompt is from devilish1, who specified Doctor/Rose and gets bonus Jack. Because you can't prompt me "pudding" and not expect me to immediately think of my Pudding 'Verse. I had a little trip down Memory Lane, rereading them, and... goodness. I do think I've improved as a writer in the last five years. I hope so, anyway. If you're curious, you're welcome to [read them](http://azriona.livejournal.com/tag/pudding%20verse), but all you really need to know is that the Pudding 'Verse is OT3 Nine/Rose/Jack, and they are meant to be fun, funny little bits of fluff, and for the most part, are exactly that.
> 
> Some of the dialogue is taken straight from the 2007 Children in Need episode, _Born Again_. (You know, that little snippet of show where the Doctor talks about how they hopped for their lives and then tries to crash the TARDIS on Christmas Eve.)

“It’s like…” The man trailed off for a moment, lost in his own head as he tried to finish the statement.  The Doctor’s leather coat hung on him like it belonged to an older brother. The man’s eyes were nearly rolling back into his head with the effort of trying to think, and his mouth was open, ready to say what _it_ was like the moment he thought of it.

 

Rose pressed into Jack’s side, so still she might have stopped breathing.  Her hands were freezing cold in Jack’s, but he pressed against her, just to reassure her that he was still there, was still as stunned as she was, was still _Jack_.

 

“ _Chocolate pudding!_ ” finished the Doctor triumphantly, and he broke into a happy grin. 

 

(Same grin, same fold around the cheeks, same enthusiasm.  Not the same lips. Not the same teeth.  Not the same cheeks.)

 

“Pudding,” said Jack flatly.

 

“Excellent stuff, pudding,” continued the Doctor breezily, the words flowing easily now, as if his previous confusion was the stopper in a very large bottle.  “Chocolate, butterscotch, French vanilla, lemon, caramel.  Did you know puddings used to be entirely savoury?  Derived from the Latin _botellus_ for sausages.  _Boudin_ for black pudding by the Middle Ages, and now _pudding_ – commonly used in reference to dessert of course.  Rose!  That’s what we should do, we should go back to Rome. Fantastic food, they had this honey-flavored thing that you’d love.  You could dress in a toga.  You’d look beautiful in a toga.”

 

“Doctor,” said Jack, his voice so even and calm and… _rational_ , that Rose felt perfectly justified in closed her eyes and holding her breath, because otherwise she was probably going to cry.

 

It was perfectly all right to have a breakdown, when someone else was clearly capable of taking charge of a situation.

 

“Barcelona!” shouted the Doctor, as he started to run around the console, frantically hitting buttons and pulling switches.  “Not the city, the planet.  They’ve got dogs with no noses.  Imagine how many times a day you end up telling that joke, and it’s still funny.”

 

The TARDIS gave a sickening groan, and then lurched.  Rose turned her face into Jack’s chest, felt his arm come up around her to hold her steady.

 

She breathed into him, the _familiar_ of Jack, solid and sure.  Felt the TARDIS digging up into her bum, the way her fingers could loop around the edges of the platform. 

 

Everything was the same.  Just the center that held them all together was not.

 

“Doctor,” said Jack, a bit more urgent now.

 

The Doctor skidded to a halt.  His mouth pursed and he sucked in a breath.

 

“I… have got… a _mole_ ,” he announced, as if he’d just noticed the elephant in the room. 

 

“No, there isn’t,” said Rose quietly, almost desperately.

 

“I can _feel_ it.  Between my shoulder blades.  There’s a _mole_.”

 

And then the Doctor grinned with delight.  “Well, go on then, the pair of you!  Cat got your tongues?  Tell me!  What do you think?”

 

Rose pushed her head further into Jack.

 

“The legend’s true,” said Jack, and Rose felt her blood run cold.  “You can… _change_.”

 

“Yup,” said the Doctor proudly.  “I was dying; changed every cell in my body.  Still me, though.”

 

Rose squeezed her eyes closed.  Jack smelled like cotton and leather, like blood and sweat, like sand and dust, like oil and grease.  He smelled like Jack. 

 

She didn’t want to smell anything else.

 

“It’s still me,” said the Doctor, closer now.  As if he was kneeling before them, and Rose felt Jack shift beside her – not enough to let her go, but as if he was reaching out to the new (old?) person with them.

 

A soft sound, skin against skin, lips against lips.  A sigh, and a whimper.  Jack’s sigh.

 

Rose didn’t recognize the whimper, and the unfamiliarity hurt.

 

“Doc,” said Jack, low.

 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor.  Funny how Rose could _hear_ the grin.

 

“Nice face,” said Jack, and Rose could hear the thickness there.

 

“Thought you’d like it,” said the Doctor cheekily, and Rose hated him.

 

 _Hated him_.

 

“Rose,” said the Doctor, gently.

 

“I _hate_ chocolate,” Rose burst, and pushed against Jack, scrambled to her feet, and disappeared deep into the TARDIS.

 

*

 

The Doctor was moving around the console, never stopping, never pausing for longer than it would take to press a button or shift a lever.

 

“It’s not true.”

 

Shift, turn, stride.

 

“She just needs time.”

 

Push, twist, jump.

 

“She’s so young.”

 

Spin, turn, slide.

 

“She’s human, this was a bit too… alien for her.”

 

“ _I’m_ human, Doc,” said Jack, breaking into the Doctor’s strange, disjointed monologue, dizzy from watching him.

 

“Highly evolved, you keep saying,” said the Doctor, still running his hands through his hair.  Jack wasn’t sure he realized he was doing it.  How could a man just transformed have already picked up nervous ticks?  “And you’d heard the legends.  Look how fast you accepted the new me!  Rose… I didn’t prepare her for this.”

 

“You think I’ve _accepted_ you just as easily as that?” said Jack, a bit more harshly than he intended, and he watched as the Doctor winced.

 

“Cancel Barcelona,” he said, and was suddenly spinning around the console again.  “London.  Powell Estate.  Christmas!  We’ll go to Christmas Eve.  Jackie and fish and chips, sausage and mash, beans on toast.  Turkey.”

 

He made a face.  “On second thought, better stick to the tea.”

 

The TARDIS shuddered.

 

“You’re taking her _home_?” sputtered Jack.  “She goes into hysterics because you nearly _died_ right in front of us, and your solution is to _take her home_?”

 

The Doctor didn’t answer. 

 

Two strides, and Jack grabbed the closest lever and pulled.  The TARDIS gave a lurch, knocking both of them to the ground.  The Doctor’s head banged against the floor, exactly like the deep tolling of a bell, as Jack landed on top of him.

 

“Oi,” said the Doctor, a bit weakly.  “Careful of my mole!”

 

“You want me to admire your mole?” said Jack, through gritted teeth.  “Then you’re going to go and find her, and make this right.”

 

The Doctor didn’t say anything for a moment.  “I… I don’t know what to say.  My head – it’s not finished yet, Jack.  You’re the human.  Can’t you…?”

 

“No,” said Jack firmly.  He pushed himself off the Doctor, and stood over him, one hand offered to help him up.  “You.”

 

The Doctor looked up at Jack, took a breath – and then took his hand to pull himself up.

 

He didn’t let go.

 

“Jack,” he said, and Jack could see the wideness of his eyes.  The strange angles of his face.  The clear, open honesty that replaced the dark mystery of the man he’d fallen in love with not so long ago.

 

(And long enough ago that sometimes, Jack forgot what it’d been like, before life had been the three of them.)

 

“Jack,” said the Doctor.  “Are we…?”

 

Jack gripped his hand between them, and pulled the Doctor in.  One hand to the back of the Doctor’s neck, and then their lips together.  Rough and forceful, the way their kisses had always been…

 

But different now.  The Doctor didn’t meet Jack with force, but hesitatingly, uncertain at first, and then with growing desperation, needing confirmation and assurance in a way that Jack hadn’t really had from the Doctor before.

 

He tasted exactly the same.  Like spices and air that Jack couldn’t name, but wanted to taste just another moment more than he had to spare.

 

When the kiss broke, the Doctor was breathing heavily, eyes closed.  Jack ran his fingers down the side of the Doctor’s face, over the ridiculous sideburns, around to his back.

 

“Go,” he said gently, his voice hoarse.  “I want to see that mole.”

 

The Doctor opened his eyes and grinned back.

 

And then went, his shoes clattering on the floor.

 

Jack waited until he couldn’t hear his footsteps any more before he sat down, covered his face with his folded arms, and let himself begin to mourn.

 

*

 

The Doctor wasn’t sure where to find Rose.  She wasn’t in the kitchen, or the bedrooms, or the garden, or the library.  She wasn’t in the Wardrobe, or the Zero Room.  She wasn’t in the pool.  She wasn’t in the lavatory. 

 

She simply… wasn’t.

 

And his head ached; the thoughts twisted round and round, a jumble of memories from every past regeneration, a thousand companions (a thousand?  Surely not that many) speaking in a cacophony of voices that grew louder or softer with every footstep, as if cycling through their turns at the top of a list.

 

Some of the voices, he didn’t even recognize, as if the memories he hadn’t experienced were making themselves heard, too. 

 

“Doctor!” “Spaceman!” “Grandfather!” “You clever boy!” “Professor!”

 

“Ow,” said the Doctor, and leaned against the coral corridor – _coral corridor toreador, toreador! Et songe bien, oi, songe en combatant…._

 

“No, that’s not right,” said the Doctor, confused, and slid down to sit on the ground.  The wall provided a comfortable cradle.  He could just sit and wait for Rose to find him.  She always came looking, even when she wanted a bit of time to herself. 

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor told the coral floor, patting it absently.  “I bungled it all, didn’t I?”

 

_Toreador, toreador._

 

“It’s all mixed up in my head,” the Doctor explained gravely.  “I’m not sure where she is, you see.”

 

 _Toreador, toreador_.

 

“Ahhhh, get out of my _head_!” groaned the Doctor, and banged the back of his head against the coral wall.

 

_Et que l’amour t’attend_

_Toreador, l’amore t’attend!_

 

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open.  “Of _course_!” he shouted, and was on his feet in an instant. 

 

*

 

The Doctor found Rose in his bedroom.

 

His bedroom as it was, as he’d lived in it, was… odd.  A bit like walking into a place he could only remember distantly.  It was clean, but had a sort of stale taste to the air already.  Already, he could see things he wanted to change – something on the bare walls that he’d never bothered to decorate.  A pile of books he wanted to read on the bedside table.  A few extra pillows, instead of the nearly flat one that lay at the head of the bed.

 

Lots of pillows, thought the Doctor, idly, almost wildly, he’d put in lots of pillows, of all sizes and levels of squishability, and different materials and colors… but Rose looked at him warily, and he couldn’t stand there thinking much longer.

 

Rose pulled her knees closer to her chest, holding her breath.  Something about the tension in her shoulders made him edge his way into the room.  Cautiously, gradually, he sat on the bed opposite her, ready to leave if she made any indication that she wanted him gone.

 

“Thing is,” she said slowly, “you’re _not_ him.”

 

“I am, though,” said the Doctor, and Rose shook her head.  “Rose, you saw me change.  I _had_ to, if I was going to stay with you and Jack.”

 

Rose hid her mouth behind her knees, and watched him.

 

“The first words I ever said to you,” said the Doctor suddenly.  “Trapped in that cellar.  Surrounded by shop window dummies.  Oh…. Such a long time ago.  I took your hand…”

 

He put out his hand, palm up, waiting. 

 

Rose didn’t move.

 

“How?” she asked, so small.

 

“It’s like…”  He exhaled in one slow, long breath.  “A kaleidoscope.  Did you ever own a kaleidoscope, Rose?  Hold it up to the light, give it a turn and watch the colors change?”

 

Rose nodded.

 

“That’s a Time Lord.  Only we don’t change so often.  That was just one view you saw.  And now – it’s a new view.  Same kaleidoscope.  Same bits and bobs and colored things all jumbled up together.  Just… a different focus.”

 

“That doesn’t make you the same, though,” said Rose, lifting her chin above her knees. 

 

The Doctor tried not to grin – it was harder than he expected.  His face just seemed to _want_ to grin.  “Maybe not entirely.  But… the important parts are still me.”

 

Rose didn’t say anything.  She just looked at him, without blinking.  Sitting on his bed, where she’d never sat before.

 

 _It’s your room,_ she’d laughed.  _You should have your own space when you’ve had enough of the humans._

 

Sitting on his bed.  In the place she thought of as _his_.

 

Oh.

 

“I still want you here,” said the Doctor, as slow and careful and firm as he could make it.  “You and Jack.  That hasn’t changed.”

 

“Here, or… _here_?” asked Rose, and there wasn’t any mistaking the difference in her meaning.

 

He still held out his hand, waiting for her to take it – now he gave it a small shake, and let the smile spread across his face into a wide grin. 

 

Rose’s hand was warm in his.  He wrapped his fingers around it, and gave it a lazy, rolling sort of shake.

 

When he leaned forward to kiss her, she didn’t startle, or hesitate.  He heard the soft sound of surprise in her throat, and let her lead the way, until her gentle exploration became her way of reclaiming him.

 

When she pulled away, he was still grinning.  He wasn’t sure he’d ever stopped.

 

“Hello,” he said, happy.

 

 _Really_ happy, in a way that he hadn’t been able to be, before.  This new him, he could be happy.  He had the capacity. 

 

He wondered if Jack and Rose had given it to him.  Where his regeneration might have gone if he hadn’t had them to show him the way.

 

There was only one thing missing.

 

One small thing.

 

One word.

 

From Rose.

 

He waited.

 

She took a breath, and gave it to him.

 

“ _Doctor_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm releasing a book in January! [You can find more information here.](http://geni.us/1CRS)


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